Comments on: Guardian Cryptic N° 25,685 by Pasquale

By: brucew_aus

brucew_aus — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:19:45 +0000

Thanks Pasquale and PeterO

This was not an easy solve and have persisted for more than a week just chipping away at him (finished on 19th) until he finally buckled. I entered both RUSH and ERODED initially which just put one behind the 8-ball straightaway and took a bit of work to get back on track.

Deceptive really when EXCISE went in immediately and quickly finished off the SE corner – had not heard of my last in, BALTIC, used in that context before and took a while to remember the BALTI roll that I had for lunch a few weeks ago. SEANAD, FORAMINIFER, ANDALUSITE and BRIDLINGTON all new to me as well, so did need a bit of reference help to get over the line.

Still it is always a pleasure having the wrestle with this setter and always look forward to starting one of them.

Thanks again

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:31:35 +0000

Sorry,I misunderstood your last para @43.

By: duncan

duncan — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:28:37 +0000

DNF here too, though I will stash the new knowledge away for the future. I had “bridlington” but didn’t put it in because I didn’t know “ton”. a great many new words, a few forgotten, & the absolute certainty that there was no way the canadian pomp-rock trio would have found their way into a pasquale….
onwards & upwards.

By: Davy

Davy — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 11:24:23 +0000

RCW at 45 : I would suggest that you read these comments properly especially 42.

I found T4TT as ‘Time for the truth’.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:44:23 +0000

Yes, a toughie. I put “Rush” for 11 ac. It was all downhill from there..

By: Sil van den Hoek

Sil van den Hoek — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:27:48 +0000

T4TT is probably Times For The Times (the Times crossword blog), am I right?

By: RCWhiting

RCWhiting — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 10:14:30 +0000

Davy @43
It’s ‘foraminifer’ not ‘forafiminer’.
Davy @44
Athletics fans (me) would recognise DNF as ‘did not finish’.
Can’t help with T4TT.

By: Davy

Davy — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:18:33 +0000

There are a pageful of different meanings for DNF ie http://www.acronymfinder.com/DNF.html
so which one JS ?.

By: Davy

Davy — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:09:20 +0000

Thanks Pasquale,

Certainly a tough one. I gave up with about a third uncompleted. Sad thing is that I guessed FORAMINIFER but it seemed so unlikely that
I didn’t even bother to check it. Hey ho.

I wasn’t going to bother commenting until I saw JollySwagman at 42. I’m just off to check what T4TT and DNF mean.
Should I know what these terms mean or am I just hopelessly out of touch (hopefully) ?.
Incidentally, just to be pedantic (what again), your FORAFIMINER does not fit the clue as it contains FI and not IF.

By: JollySwagman

JollySwagman — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 03:19:25 +0000

Wow Grauniad grid #31 eh! Half a mo while I cross that off in my gridspotters almanac. Aren’t ones like that are designed so you can put ninas round the edge, for even greater excitement? Short-changed there maybe.

Usual lack of entertainment value from this setter taking the puzzle as a whole which is a shame since many of the minor clues were rather good. If you knew the obscurities, especially foraminifer, it was prolly a pushover, if not it spoiled the fun a bit, as they were in key positions. I don’t see the grid itself as a problem otherwise.

Actually I built that as FORAFIMINER (before consulting the big red one) so in the terminology of T4TT a technical DNF for me.